Against the Owl
by NiDubhchair
Summary: An Unfluffy Not Quite One Shot :D The Thane of Ross, brother to Lady MacDuff, witnesses her murder from afar. Later, MacDuff visits his burnt out castle and the graves of his family and contemplates the consequences of his actions. Surprise Ending!
1. In One Fell Swoop

**Against the Owl**

By NiDubhchair

_The Thane of Ross, brother to Lady MacDuff, witnesses her murder from afar. Later, MacDuff visits his burnt-out castle and the graves of his family and contemplates the consequences of his actions. Rated PG for some intense scenes._

Gavan, the Thane of Ross, pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he rode through the barren hills and gnarled copses of the Fife Highlands. His sister's words to him when he had brought her news of her husband's flight chilled him. "Even the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in the nest, against the owl," she had said. Her eyes, like to the surface of a loch on a starry night, had flashed as if with heaven's fire. Ross knew his sister, knew the courage of her soul, which held him with a loyalty second only to the fealty he owed her husband, MacDuff, the Thane of Fife. "Only a woman could call such a man a coward…" he said aloud. Ross tried to explain away his uneasiness with words, remembrances of slaughter and glory at the side of his brave kinsman. He fled only to save himself for Scotland! For the succor of his country he was man enough to risk all!

. . . But to leave a woman, a wife, a sister…to leave 6 children and countless retainers, to the mercy of a madman, changeful as an autumn sea? Ross had been there, had watched the soul behind the Thane of Glamis' eyes die as he screamed of murder and blood to an empty chair at his last ill-begotten banquet. Ross had, with the Thanes of Lennox and Angus, looked upon Banquo as he lay bloodied and mangled in Sidhe Bruach's dry streambed. His eyes and open mouth and gaping wounds seemed to whisper with all the voices of the hills, _"Macbeth…O, slave! Macbeth!" _Yet, even one so reddened with unnatural murders as the King could not yet be so confident to murder openly, pleaded Ross with himself, not with Prince Malcolm and MacDuff and the entirety of their vassal thanes still living?

A strange sound interrupted his thoughts, a clamor and the rush of flames borne upon the Highland wind. The Thane of Ross urged his horse on to the crest of a lonely hill, crowned with Fay stones, and looked back towards his sister's castle. The picture that met his eyes burned thereafter in his mind until old age took it mercifully from him. Flames shot from the outbuildings of the castle, yet but a mile off, and on the strong north wind he could hear their screams, shrieks of child and of maidservant, of mother and of babe, rending the air, made, but marked by no man living but himself. Ross spurred his horse back in their direction, with mad thoughts of revenge and rescue pressing on his brain, then stopped, halted by horror at the sight of a flaming body thrown from an upper window. It would be too late. He was too late. The tyrant's murderers would only cut him down if he went back, and no one would be left to tell the story of this lost family to its lord. And yet, for all his sense of duty to MacDuff, he could not ride away.

He waited through the night, sitting within the ancient circle of stones on the hill-top, watching the glow of the fires die down, listening as the wretched kern of murderers galloped past on the road below. He did not stir until the first birdsong broke, just before the dawn. Then it was that he methodically mounted his horse and rode down again into the smoke-smothered valley. He stopped only once on his way, at the gate of the castle, to stare. The portcullis had not been dropped, the gates had not been touched or burned in any way. And yet he'd left them with strict instructions to lock and bar the castle's entrance secure behind him.

So, his sister and his kinsman's children had been betrayed, their lives torn open and flung away by the base hands of a treacherous servant, who, in the fee of the mad king, had opened the gates and let in the floods of death. Ross drew his sword, willing to kill anything that might still be lurking about, likewise looking for gain and plunder.

The castle was left a heap of ashy stone, its strong supports having cracked and fallen under the fire's fury. Only the northwest tower had escaped the collapse, a lonely, defeated sentinel. The courtyard-chapel's stone walls still stood, roofless and windowless, like dead hands lifted in a last appeal to heaven. They barely concealed the desperate tangle of bodies laying about the altar, peasants and retainers forced within and burned alive while the murderers turned their slaughter on the family.

Their bodies were not hard to find. MacDuff's three daughters had been playing in the yard, for Ross found their bodies lying together, still clutching the dolls and hoops of a girl's game. The charred body of his eldest son lay some yards from the castle wall, and from its posture Ross could now guess what child he had seen thrown from an upper window. Lady MacDuff and her second son were harder to uncover, as they still lay within the rubble of the castle; but Ross, though he scored and bloodied his hands with the removal of stones and was nearly faint with hunger by the end, discovered them as the sun set over Ben Araigdh, the dying light coloring their cold faces with carmine. The wooden sword crafted by the boy's father was still grasped in his hand. Lady MacDuff's arms were stretched out, the hands crushed beneath a large, unmovable,ceiling beam. Gavan guessed that if he could lift it, he would find the sixth child of MacDuff, an infant christened only the month previous. He extricated the lady's hands as well he could, and bore her and her son away.

Ross knew the correct forms of the burial service well enough, being a soldier well brought-up in war and all its trappings, but as he dug the six shallow graves, and laid the bodies gently down within as if tucking them in bed and wishing them a last good-night, his voice choked on the "Gloria Patriae," and his tongue, for all its training, could not pronounce "Amen." The only hymn heard was the weeping of a warrior as night descended, and the nightingale began his song.


	2. I Cannot But Remember Such Things Were

**Chapter 2: I Cannot but Remember Such Things Were**

"Father?"

"Yes, my son?"

"Wilt thou make me a sword like unto yours?"

"When thou art strong enough to bear it."

"When wilt that be?"

"Thou willst know."

_Pain. His shield arm disabled. The ghostly sounds of battle faded, and only the pain in his body and the pain in his heart gave him strength to face the mad-man's sword. One block too slow. He fell. _

"Da?"

"Yes, Graelebh?"

"Can witches really fly through the night and steal me away?"

"No, not while I and Father Ian guard thee."

"Ialeis says they want my soul."

"So they do. But they can only have it if you give it them."

"_No man of woman born . . ." He watched silently as he lay, his blood pooling around him as the tyrant's steel flew towards its mark. So this was the vision that had clouded the last sight of his sons._

"Aithar, canst trees walk like men?"

_His sons. Their shades seemed to call from past the twilight, asking him to live. For what, he knew not, but the strength that had moved forests moved him too. "Despair thy charm . . .!"_

"They did today, Ialeis, they did today."

Macduff sat against a large fallen cornerstone, as the morning sun crept up over the mountains and spilled its lifeblood into the valleys. He could not but remember such things that were most precious to him. Each dream, each little voice seemed to grow more real with every passing hour of sunlight. His wounds pained him, had stiffened in the still night during his long ride from Dunsinane. Some of them bled still. He wondered, dispassionately, if he would die there. It would be only fitting. The other earls were capable. Scotland needed him no more.

Malcolm had begged him to stay. A priest had ordered him to bed. Lennox had attempted to hold him back, only to reel away nursing a bruised eye.

"Ride to Fife? You're mad, Aleisan!" Angus had tried to persuade him. "We need you here, alive, if possible . . . the King needs you!"

"My family needed me. I go to them now, and you know the strength I may still unleash, wounded as I am, if you attempt to stop me."

He had taken to horse, the blood still streaming from his brow, arm, and side. His last glance as he rode away had been at the tyrant's accursed head, fixed upon the battlements.

Unmoving, his eyes stared straight across the ruins and windy nothingness that was once the bustling fief of Fife. His fief. This, the prize of his first battle, his first wound. This, his good wife's well-won dowry. This, the pride of his youth, the glory of his manhood. Ashes. His fief? What good was it? What good had it done him? His wife. His children. There should his pride have properly rested, and yet it did not. Had he those precious motives forsook, for his own miserable life? For his own miserable name, worthless land, and empty title? He could not bring his eyes to leave the six lonely cairns, standing as testament to his betrayal and his loss. He could almost see them as they lay. His wife, her blue gown still unspoiled, her hair still a sun-shaming gold, her pure, white body streched cold upon the earth, the little one in her arms. His sons, their swords under crossed hands upon their chests, warrior's graves given them before their boyhood's flight. His daughters, white lilies crushed beneath cruel hands.

"Oh, Christ, why did I leave them?" He crossed himself, but could not stop the tears. "Oh, Queen of Heaven, where were you when my wife and daughters called for me? Oh, Father Eternal, where were you as they lay dying, no father's hand to check their ravishers? Oh, Lord Christ, where was I? I dare not call myself their father . . . I dare not even call myself a man."

The groaning of his spirit seemed too much, his very bones would fade away to dust beneath the inexorable loneliness, the horror of helplessness which overwhelmed him.

With what strength he had left, he crawled to the first of the cairns, laid his head on its stone bosom, and dreamed of his wife.

"_Aleisan."_

_She stood above him, her beauty strengthened by what seemed to be light of a thousands suns. Her hair a luscious river of glory, the brightness of her eyes like a summer-night's sky, she knelt beside him and stroked his face, still begrimed with the blood and dirt of battle. _

"_My love." He tried to embrace her, but his arms could not grasp hers, simply slipping from them as if they attempted to grasp cloud. Yet, the wheight of her beauty and being made his own body feel ghostlike and thin. For those brief seconds, _he_ was the dream, and she the reality._

"_My own, beauty most dear, can I not touch you?"_

"_No. That time has not yet come. Fear not, its hour approacheth sooner than thou might wish."_

"_Am I to die then? May I die? O, Love, may death enfold me now so that I may enfold thee as I wish to?"_

"_All men die. But wish not for what is not yet rightly yours. Death must be won as well as life. A warrior will not ask for what he could not expect to be given. Thou knowest this."_

"_But, my heart, how can I ask your absolution of my hideous sin? What hope have I to end this torment?"_

"_More than thou knowest, _mo chroi_." She smiled at him, her forgiveness as palpable as the light that crowned her. "But thou must awake and claim the promise given thee, for one still waits for you. Take our absolution, take the knowledge of the bliss wherein we dwell. The Mother of God watches over our children now. Can you hear them? Hear them, love, and know the Mercy." Her hand touched his forehead, and now he could feel her, could sense her warmth, her blessing travelling into him, could feel the Cross she traced upon his skin. He caught the faint sounds of children laughing as he faded back into the world._

"My lord? Lord Macduff, canst thou hear me?"

When Macduf opened his eyes, it was twilight. His body felt as if it had melded with the cold stone he lay against, and any small suggestion of movement was met with firey resistance; yet he noticed that now his head and side were crudely bandaged. The voice which had wakened him was just off to his left, beyond his first line of site. It sounded young, and worried.

"I hear thee. Who . . .?"

The face of a young man appeared over him, his curly brown hair ringed with the setting sun. His square jaw and light blue eyes looked familiar, and Macduff noticed the scar of a recent wound upon his brow. He realized that he had indeed seen that firm mouth and heard those dertermined tones before. But, it could not be. Not him. He was dead.

"Banq…No, you . . ."

"Close, my lord. And being a warrior's son has taught me something of wounds, so hold still while I bandage this last gash. Looks as if our late King knew his work with a sword. They did not call him 'Brave Macbeth' for nought."

"Fleance!"

"Aye, my lord. I did not flee as far as King Malcolm when my own father was killed. Of course, when he escaped the tyrant's grasp he was unharmed."

The boy touched the scar above his left eye, and his gaze turned within for a brief moment.

"We were attacked by three ruffians that night. They had quarterstaves, much the advantage against even my father's experienced sword. The shortest one clipped me one before my father jumped him, allowing me to escape. But he did not."

"He was buried with much honor. I am glad to see thee alive, and so, I suspect, is he."

"Aye. He saved more than he knew."

"How did you come to be here?"

"I headed here after the ambush. I might have arrived before thy flight, but my wound slowed me. I lay feverish in the forest for a day, and when I finally made it to thy gates, everything and everyone was destroyed. All but the smallest, that is."

Fleance smiled, stood, and walked out of Macduff's site once more.

"What . . .? What mean you?"

He tried again to leave his prone position, gritting his teeth against the pain.

"Do not move yet, my lord," called Fleance, "You still have someone left to be healthy for."

Macduff tried to quench the flame of hope that sparked in his breast. No, Gavan, had said they were all buried. No one could have survived. Some heirloom, some family treasure was recovered perhaps, but that had to be all.

Then he heard it: a small cry, the tiny, helpless mewling of a babe. Fleance came around the back of the cairn, cradling a wriggling something wrapped in a scrap of Macduff tartan.

"I'm not certain, but I think this little one belongs to you."

Macduff took the bundle gently from the boy, wonder and apprehension battling within him. Yet, all turned to joy as he beheld the tiny child in his arms: its small scrap of golden hair and loch-blue eyes just like its mother's, arms and legs and fingers and toes so tiny, yet moving so vigorously against his chest. His child. His youngest son, christened Dubhshith MacAleisan just a month previous. The tiny boy was crying – from hunger, he assumed – but after just a few seconds in his father's arms the baby calmed, at last aware of home, of sanctuary.

"Where . . . how . . . when?" Macduff could barely hold back tears of bittersweet joy as he questioned.

"I found him hidden away in the northwest tower of the keep, the part of it still standing that is. It was a miracle, really. The Lady . . . your wife must've run and hid him in the private chapel up there . . . I found him in the tabernacle, tucked in next to the host." The pious lad crossed himself and continued. "It was a job to climb up there, with the stairs all broken-up and crumbled away in places. But I heard him wailing his little heart out almost as soon as I'd gotten here . . . The Lady was quite a clever woman sir, to hide him in there. I would never have thought to look there. And lucky that part of the place escaped the fire."

"My wife did not believe in luck. That is why she picked that place to tuck away this, my last treasure."

He stroked the baby's face, and Dubhshith clutched at his index finger with a fierce grip.

"He has your strength, my Lord."

"Aye. May he learn to use it more wisely than I. May he someday forgive me for what I have done to the rest of his family."

"He will. You will too, God willing. They," he gestured to the six silent cairns, "have forgiven already, if I may venture to guess."

Macduff closed his eyes, and for a brief moment he saw again the glory of his wife's eyes. His wounds were aching, his body worn-out beyond its endurance, but with his son's heart beating against his, all came together and refreshed him with their reminder of life and purpose still within. A battle was won, the rightful King was crowned, but there was still work for him to do, as there is always for warriors of good heart.

"You may venture to guess that, Fleance MacBanquo. For it is true."


End file.
